A perspective on Fatigue Performance of Rail Profiles under Shuttle Loads

Cold roll forming is a continuous process aiming a progressive bending of sheet steel using stations with rotating rolls, without changing material thickness [1]. Racking systems used today in logistic industries are normally made of thin-walled cold formed steel members. Cold roll forming processes introduce residual stresses in steel components and when combined with service loading stresses (e.g. due to the passage of shuttles in racking systems), these stresses may change the resulting stress range or average, affecting fatigue life of these components. FASTCOLD project purpose is to develop fatigue design rules for cold formed steel members. Design rules already exist for hot-rolled steel details in EN1993-1-9 [2]. However, for cold formed steel sections, they are missing on a European level (EN1993-1-9: Design of steel structures - Part 1-9: Fatigue does not present fatigue design rules or classification of cold-formed thin-walled details) [2]. Due to the lack of these fatigue design rules for cold rolled formed steel members, this paper aims at analysing the stresses induced by roll forming and propose a setup for testing representative rail profiles under fatigue loadings that could arise from shuttle moving loads.